The Ahmadi-nejad Administration has also ignored the Majlis report and stood silent.
But a Majlis deputy said 55 deputies are writing a letter to the president and the chairman of the Judiciary demanding some action. Zohreh Elahian, a member of the committee that investigated the Kahrizak case, said the deputies will ask the president to suspend Mortazavi from all official posts until the issue is resolved. She also said that a group of deputies had met recently with Judiciary Chairman Sadeq Larijani and asked him about putting Mortazavi on trial. She said Larijani responded that the question was on the Judiciary’s agenda.
Mortazavi himself has spoken out, however. Seven days after the report fingering him was released, Mortazavi denied everything.
The heart of the charge is that Mortazavi ordered 147 protesters sent to the Kahrizak detention center, which was not equipped to handle them, while there was plenty of space to house them at Evin prison. At Kahrizak, they were jammed into a small room with 30 common criminals. Three of the prisoners later died of beatings.
Mortazavi said he had nothing to do with assigning the 147 men to Kahrizak on July 9. He explained that he was on leave at the time, PressTV reported. But the January 10 Majlis report quotes him as telling the Majlis investigators that he sent the men to Kahrizak because Evin had no space for them. The report also quotes the Evin warden as saying he had plenty of space.
Mortazavi denied any role in a letter to Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani. The letter accused the Majlis deputies who ran the investigation of having “sympathy for a bunch of thugs” while failing to consider the police who were injured in suppressing the protests.
Meanwhile, National Police Chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam announced last Wednesday that he will install television cameras throughout Iran’s prisons to monitor the staff and prevent any mistreatment of prisoners. He said the cameras would be operational no later than March 2011 and would be monitored from a center in Tehran.
